An­na-Lisa Paul

An au­dit is to be con­duct­ed to de­ter­mine just how $163 mil­lion in bond fi­nanc­ing which was hand­ed to the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) in May, was spent and on what projects – or if it formed part of the ex­pen­di­ture in the run-up to the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed THA elec­tions.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia dur­ing his first post THA post-coun­cil meet­ing on Wednes­day, new­ly in­stalled Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine ex­pressed sur­prise over the re­port­ed­ly emp­ty cof­fers as he ac­cused the for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) ex­ec­u­tive of fi­nan­cial ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in what he de­scribed as their “un­fet­tered ap­proach to spend­ing.”

Is­su­ing a re­minder to the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day to fol­low the law and dis­burse funds quar­ter­ly, he said the pre­vi­ous arrange­ment had seen funds be­ing dis­bursed ir­reg­u­lar­ly and main­ly on a month­ly ba­sis, which made it dif­fi­cult to do busi­ness.

He said the pre­vi­ous dis­burse­ment method had led to the THA “hav­ing to use an over-draft fa­cil­i­ty at the bank.” Au­gus­tine said it was cost­ing them a tidy sum which was not catered for in the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion from the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Claim­ing the THA was al­most through its quar­ter­ly fis­cal al­lo­ca­tion, he re­ferred to the un­spent bal­ance of $50, 506,501 as, “not a lot.”

Fac­ing a wors­en­ing health cri­sis re­quir­ing more than $100 mil­lion to treat with it, the new THA head added: “CEPEP and URP will take all of that $50 mil­lion plus some more.”

Au­gus­tine said the $18 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed in the na­tion­al bud­get in Oc­to­ber, was woe­ful­ly in­suf­fi­cient to en­sure the con­tin­ued em­ploy­ment of these work­ers for the re­main­der of fis­cal 2022.

How­ev­er, he is­sued a guar­an­tee to these peo­ple that the THA was com­mit­ted to find­ing the mon­ey to pay their salaries.

He said, “We will keep you on the pay­roll be­cause I be­lieve strong­ly that those who are most vul­ner­a­ble must be pro­tect­ed the most.”

Cau­tion­ing that To­ba­go no longer had a buffer in terms of de­vel­op­ment spend­ing, Au­gus­tine laid bare the is­land’s lack of fi­nances say­ing:“We were to get some $300 mil­lion, but we got $163 mil­lion some­time in May. Guess what? In less than six months, every sin­gle cent of the $163 mil­lion was spent. All of it.”

He said he had, “re­quest­ed a list of all the projects that this mon­ey was spent on and all the peo­ple who ben­e­fit­ed from this $163 mil­lion.” He said there was no pri­or­i­ty list to de­ter­mine just how the monies were spent.

“In or­der to get the rest of the bond fi­nanc­ing, we have to go back to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and ap­peal to him to al­low us to bor­row the rest of the bond fi­nanc­ing,” he said.

A let­ter is ex­pect­ed to be dis­patched to­day to Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert for a meet­ing.

Claim­ing the bond fi­nanc­ing had been used “sim­ply be­cause we were in an elec­tion year,” Au­gus­tine said promis­es of pru­dent re­straint in spend­ing went out the win­dow as the op­po­site had hap­pened.

Pressed to say if the po­lice would be brought in if the au­dit re­vealed fi­nan­cial mis­man­age­ment and mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds, he said, “I’ve al­ready sig­nalled for an in­ter­nal au­dit to start in some de­part­ments, but for oth­er de­part­ments we have to bring in au­di­tors.”

“In terms of the po­lice, let me as­sure you that what war­rants po­lice in­ter­ven­tion, will get po­lice in­ter­ven­tion. We’re not go­ing to waste time…we have to be se­ri­ous about the fi­nances of the peo­ple of To­ba­go,” he not­ed.

Mean­while, with on­ly $392,543.88 left in the Con­tin­gency Fund—which is usu­al­ly used for an emer­gency, Au­gus­tine said, “We can­not even af­ford an emer­gency in To­ba­go. That is the re­al­i­ty.”

He said, “I feel as though peo­ple were de­lib­er­ate­ly fis­cal­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble, sim­ply be­cause peo­ple felt that they need­ed to spend what need­ed to be spent to get an ad­van­tage dur­ing an elec­tion.”

De­scrib­ing the un­fet­tered ap­proach to spend­ing dur­ing the past six months as the cat­a­lyst which had now forced the THA to join hands with the cit­i­zen­ry to get cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive to make the pub­lic/pri­vate part­ner­ship mod­el a suc­cess, he said the monies left would not al­low the THA to do it on their own.

As­sur­ing them that, “We can get out of this,” if they put their heads to­geth­er, Aug­su­tine said, “The time will come to hold peo­ple to ac­count for this fis­cal ir­re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.”

How­ev­er, he said it was time to re­turn to the con­cept of old where To­bag­o­ni­ans had cut and con­trived, as he said this mess could be fixed.

In mov­ing for­ward, Au­gus­tine said harsh de­ci­sions have been made by the THA to re­duce ex­pens­es.

These in­clude cut­ting back on con­tracts; halt­ing em­ploy­ment; re­tain­ing on­ly nec­es­sary re­sources in or­der to main­tain op­er­a­tional costs; re­view­ing the num­ber of com­mit­tees and boards cur­rent­ly op­er­at­ing; and re­mov­ing the en­ter­tain­ment al­lowances with­in all THA di­vi­sions.

Calls to for­mer Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis went unan­swered